Accidentally left the petcock on for 5-7 hours last night, what do?

Greetings all and good morning,

On my KZ750 I have been running the petcock on "RES" only. This is because I have the vacuum port on the petcock capped off. Which works all fine and well, but I mistakenly left the fuel on the other night for what I estimate to be 5-7 hours. I came back to the garage and smelled gas, it was leaking and dripping from the bottom of my carbs. I know the engine isn't hydrolocked with gas or anything because I started it and let it run for a few minutes with the fuel off. Should I be worried about contamination of the oil with gasoline? Would this amount of time left open be harmful? I just changed the oil with Rotella T6 and it only has about 100 miles on it.

Thanks much,

-KzJM

Has the oil level risen? does the oil smell of fuel? Is there fuel in the airbox? I would suspect you will be ok

I accidentally slightly overfilled it during my oil change, so I can't tell if it is higher than normal. It has K&N filters so it has no airbox at the moment.

If I'm not mistaken gas will float on top of the oil. You could take the oil cap off and smell for gas, also syringe or suction tube some oil out since you overfilled it anyway. Try to suction from the very top; if gas is there you might be able to pull some out. If no evidence of gas that's good.

No, Franklin. Gas will mix and diluted the engine oil, like a pre-mix 2-stroke fuel.
Water will not mix and flow at the bottum and oil on top.

IMO, better safe than sorry - replacing the oil would be cheaper than possibly screwing up your engine.  Then you won't be worrying about it whenever you ride.

Scotty

sf4t7 wrote:

IMO, better safe than sorry - replacing the oil would be cheaper than possibly screwing up your engine.  Then you won't be worrying about it whenever you ride.

Scotty

 

You are right. I guess I'm going back to Walmart to get me some of that sweet sweet Rotella T6

"Scirocco post=885743 userid=48181
No, Franklin. Gas will mix and diluted the engine oil, like a pre-mix 2-stroke fuel.
Water will not mix and flow at the bottum and oil on top."

I think as long as engine wasn't run to mix them, the gas is lighter and will stay on top. I just did a little experiment, poured some oil in a jar, then some gas on top. The clearer gas stayed separated on top of the oil, it was obvious they didn't mix very much.

Edit: I missed that he had started it already. In that case I agree oil should be changed.

Can you smell gas in the oil? I suspect most came out of the carb overflows - if you are concerned, the price of a can of oil is cheap "peace of mind"

I can’t think of anything better to mix gas and oil than a rotating crankshaft. 
Change the oil and install a manual shutoff in the line. If I have it right, no vacuum fuel tap ever has an 'off' position.

But the oil level went up?

His problem is he doesn't have a vacunm petcock. If a bike I acquire dosen't have one, I install one and seldom touch it, just leave it in the ON position all the time.